A tale of ideologies: Scottish nationalism and unionism

Scottish nationalism and unionism stand in complete opposition, but are there greater similarities between their ideologies than the UK cares to admit?

Flickr/The Laird of Oldham. Some rights reserved

The story is familiar: a pesky, partisan,
immature nationalism is out and about influencing our body politic.

This is the account of Scottish nationalism
put forward by a range of commentators and public figures. Yet it could as
easily be articulated about the ideas of unionism, because unionism is at its
heart a form of nationalism: British State nationalism.

Scottish nationalism has its faults and its
limitations. It is cautious, conservative and shaped by the characteristics of
the society from which it was born. Its actual form as a nationalism is also a
limitation, but at least it understands itself as such and is seen as such a
phenomenon by everyone.

Unionism, however, doesn’t comprehend that
it is a form of nationalism, an obvious point when you think about it. What
state does unionism declare its allegiance and loyalty to above all else? The
British state. Yet unionism is in denial that it is such a thing as nationalism;
it thinks nationalism is about others and not about itself.

For this reason, unionism is not at a very
mature stage in the development of nationalism, being intransigent about the
British state and parliamentary sovereignty in relation to the EU, and even
worse, hung up on superficialities such as flags, symbols, borders and border
controls, which have traditionally transfixed certain types of nationalism.

The fact that unionism is a form of
nationalism – a point accepted as uncontroversial in political science debates
– does not make it any less legitimate or a mainstream part of Scotland and the
UK. But this lack of self-knowledge and self-acceptance limits and damages our
political debate.

Many pro-union writers of intelligence such
as Brian Wilson in ‘The Scotsman’ or Hugo Rifkind in ‘The Times’ believe that
they can take the moral high ground by dismissing Scottish nationalism for a
variety of reasons. These include that it is all about emotions, past history,
imagined grievances and shaped by a bourgeois set of priorities irrelevant to
economic and social concerns.

The emotional dismissal of Scottish
nationalism is an interesting one. Brian Wilson argues that the economic case
put forward by Alex Salmond and John Swinney is a cover and that if it could be
proven that an independent Scotland would be less well off, Nationalists
wouldn’t reverse their position. Thus, the argument goes that this isn’t about
economics, but emotions and instincts, and can therefore be dismissed.

Yet the opposite argument is just as true
and revealing. If Brian Wilson found out that an independent Scotland would be
economically better off and socially more just, he would not give up on his
belief in the UK. The reason is the same – his attachment to the UK is not
economic, but that of an emotional nationalist.

British nationalism – if it wanted to start
engaging and being relevant at this point – would embrace the idea of a
serious, long-term project of nation building at the British level which
addresses the multiple challenges and crises of Britain. It would come up with pan-British
projects beyond the tokenism of the Olympics and Southern connected focus of
HS2 which tried to tackle the realities of the disunited kingdom.

It would deal with the quasi-independence
of London as a world city from the rest of the UK, the over-concentration of
public infrastructure projects and investment in London and the South East (to
the huge detriment of the North West and North East of England), and the
absence of any political will in the Westminster classes from doing anything
about this.

The United Kingdom is one of the most
unequal states in the rich world – with one of the most uneven regional patterns
of development anywhere – and an economy, hugely imbalanced and skewed towards
short-term, predatory capitalism. For all of the talk of ‘rebalancing the
economy’, the UK in investment to GDP ratios is 159th in the world
on 2012 figures, with a mere fourteen countries below it, seven in the
sub-Saharan Africa.

An intelligent, reforming unionism would
address these long-term challenges and crises which link to the decline in
authority of the various British establishments such as political, business,
media and civic, and the collapse of trust in public institutions. This relates
to the decline in the idea of Britain which can be seen across the four nations
of the union, and which won’t be reversed by words and bluster, but need deeds
which so far look impossible.

Next year’s independence debate can be
interpreted as one between two competing claims of nationalism. One (Scottish) is
‘out’, self-aware and self-reflective about its characteristics. The other
(British) is mostly in denial and lacking in self-knowledge and self-awareness
as a version of nationalism.

A choice between two nationalisms does not –
to put it mildly – give us a very varied or dynamic political conversation. Nor
does it address the central issues which have shaped much of the Scottish
debate. Nationalism is at its core a reductive philosophy, one that is about
the competing claims of nations and the form of states.

This is a reason Scottish nationalism has
pitched its appeal on the centre-left of politics, but we have to make the
break more explicit and widen the choice. We have to address what kind of
Scotland we want to live in, which just doesn’t mean self-government versus the
union, but questions the values and priorities that we want to champion as a
society.

This should not be about one nationalism
versus another, and nor should we let the bunkum of one nationalism pretending
it isn’t one, while patronising and caricaturing the other, shape the political
environment.

There is an element of condescension and
attempted delegitimisation on the part of a generation of senior and former
Labour politicians such as Gordon Brown, Alastair Darling and George Robertson.
Rather than engage in their endless posturing, it would be more useful for all
of us if thoughtful unionist voices address how they plan to reestablish the
disunited kingdom that characterises the economic, social and political facets
of the modern UK. Unionism must have more to say on the big challenges of our
day rather than just hectoring and insulting its opponents; but that requires
confronting the many unpleasant truths about the state of the UK, which is a
bit more difficult than empty rhetoric and denial.

Gerry Hassan is Research Fellow in cultural policy at the University of the West of Scotland who has recently been awarded his PhD on political and cultural contemporary debate in the public sphere of Scotland. Gerry is the author and editor of numerous books including ‘The Strange Death of Labour Scotland’ and the just published 'After Independence' (co-edited with James Mitchell). His most recent books are 'Caledonian Dreaming: The Quest for a Different Scotland' and the just published 'Independence of the Scottish Mind: Elite Narratives, Public Spaces and the Making of a
Modern Nation'.

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